Day: May 11, 2017

An illegal immigrant – who had been deported 15 times – is accused of seriously injuring a 6-year-old boy in a Saturday night drunken driving hit-and-run crash, authorities said.

Constantino Banda-Acosta, a 38-year-old Mexican citizen, was kicked out of the U.S. 15 times in the past 15 years, with his most previous deportation coming Jan. 18, federal officials told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Banda-Acosta is accused of running a stop sign in the San Ysidro hit-and-run. He was taken into custody, about a half hour after the crash occurred, along with another man who was also an illegal immigrant.

The injured boy, Lennox Lake, was coming home from Disneyland with his family on Saturday, and the group was about a block from their home when the collision happened.

When he was found in the wrecked vehicle, Lennox was unconscious, bleeding from several head wounds and not breathing. He had a major head injury and, as of Tuesday night, had already undergone two surgeries, The Union-Tribune reported. Lennox’s family expects him to make a full recovery.

Right now he has a lot of swelling and can’t open either of his eyes so he’s scared about why he can’t see,” his father, Ben Lake, told FOX5. “I just really care about bringing him home and making sure he’s happy again.” NYPost

The Kurds have proven to be the most effective force in fighting ISIS.

President Trump has approved a plan to arm Syrian Kurds so they can participate in the battle to retake Raqqa from the Islamic State, a strategy that has drawn deep opposition from Turkey, a NATO ally.

American military commanders have long argued that arming the Y.P.G., a Kurdish militia fighting alongside Syrian Arab forces against the Islamic State, is the fastest way to seize Raqqa, the capital of the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate. NYTimes

The United States must support its NATO ally Turkey and reverse its decision to arm Syrian Kurds in the battle against the Islamic State, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. USA Today

Turkey slammed the Trump administration’s decision to supply Syrian Kurdish fighters with weapons against the Islamic State group and demanded Wednesday that it be reversed, heightening tensions between the NATO allies days before the Turkish leader heads to Washington for a meeting with President Donald Trump.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the fight against terrorism “should not be led with another terror organization” — a reference to the Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the YPG, which Turkey considers an extension of the decades-long Kurdish insurgency raging in its southeast. “We want to know that our allies will side with us and not with terror organizations,” he said.

Turkey, which has sent troops to northern Syrian in an effort to curtail Kurdish expansion along its borders, has for months tried to lobby Washington to cut off ties with the Kurds and work instead with Turkish-backed opposition fighters in the fight for Raqqa.

But the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, of SDF, which has driven IS from much of northern Syria over the past two years with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes, are among the most effective ground forces battling the extremists. In announcing the decision on Tuesday to arm the Kurds, the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, Dana W. White, called the militia “the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future.”

On Wednesday, the SDF said it captured the country’s largest dam from the Islamic State group. The fighters, which are Kurdish-led but also include some Arab fighters, said they expelled the extremists from the Tabqa Dam and a nearby town, also called Tabqa.

It was the latest IS stronghold to fall to the Kurdish-led fighters as they advance toward Raqqa — the seat of the militants’ so-called caliphate along the Euphrates River. The fall of Tabqa leaves no other major urban settlements on the road to Raqqa, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. NYDailyNews

Russia, Turkey and Iran are to map out the specific zones by June 4th.

Netanyahu: “With the framework of these arrangements, and also without them, there is an Iranian effort to become firmly established on a permanent basis in Syria, either through the presence of ground forces, or naval forces,” Netanyahu said. He also said the Syrians are involved in a “gradual attempt to open up a front against us on the Golan Heights.” JPost

Iran’s potential role in enforcing a security zone in southern Syria has raised concerns for Israel, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said Tuesday.

Under the terms of an agreement signed last week in Astana, Turkey, several large areas of western and southern Syria would become protected areas where the use of weapons, including airstrikes, would be prohibited. Russia, Iran and Turkey would be empowered to “take all necessary measures” to enforce the peace in these zones, including attacks inside those areas against Nusra Front, al-Qaida or ISIS.

One of the zones would be in southern Syria in rebel-held territory along the Israeli-Syrian border by the Golan Heights.

Dunford, who was traveling in Israel this week to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top defense officials, said Israel is concerned about the possibility of having Iranian or Iranian-backed forces, such as Hezbollah, so close to its border….

Israel has supported the rebel presence along its border, providing field hospitals to maintain a buffer between it and the Iranian and Hezbollah-backed Assad regime, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman said that Israel may endorse security zones to bring stability to Syria, but it’s unlikely to agree to any limits that would keep it from protecting interests in southern Syria or striking shipments.

The move was condemned by the Zionist group Irish4Israel, which said “such a move will have an extremely negative impact on Dublin’s international image and tourism.”

“It is quite staggering and almost admirable that these public figures spoke with such arrogant conviction, while having such little historical knowledge of the conflict and its complexities. Most rattled off a few rehashed old buzzwords while remaining comfortable in their simplistic black and white world view,” Irish4Israel added. JNS

The Dublin City Council voted to fly the Palestinian flag above City Hall in a show of support for Palestinian statehood.

Forty-two councilmen in the Irish capital voted in favor of the motion, 11 voted against and seven abstained on Monday evening.

The flag reportedly was raised over City Hall and will remain there until the end of the month. The date had been brought forward from May 15, the day on the Gregorian calendar that Israel became an independent state, and the day referred to by Palestinians as Nakba Day. In Arabic, Nakba means “catastrophe.”

An alternative resolution calling for both the Israeli and Palestinian flags to fly in acknowledgment of “the suffering of civilians on both sides” was defeated.

Ireland is rumored to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state. It was the first European country to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization and has traditionally been one of Israel’s harshest critics in the European Union. JPost

Critics of the Kremlin are being splashed with a green liquid called zelyonka.

Russian opposition leaders have never had it easy. Harassment, surveillance and violence have long been part of the landscape. But in recent months, they have also had to watch out for pro-government cronies wielding a green dye known as zelyonka. In March Alexei Navalny, Russia’s foremost opposition politician, had his face splashed with the stuff (pictured) while campaigning in the Siberian city of Barnaul.

Earlier this month, Mr Navalny announced that a second attack, which featured zelyonka mixed with another substance, had left him partially blind. (Mr Navalny underwent eye surgery in Spain this week, after Russian authorities issued him a passport for the first time in five years.) “Nowadays on the Russian political spectrum, green is the color of alarm,” says an editorial in Novaya Gazeta, a leading opposition newspaper. What is zelyonka, and why is it turning opposition-minded Russians’ faces green?

A widespread Soviet-era antiseptic akin to iodine, zelyonka, or “brilliant green”, is normally used to treat small scrapes. Pro-Kremlin activists have adopted it to stain those who challenge the government. The Economist

Brilliant Green has the added advantage of stigmatizing its victims. It is notoriously difficult to wash off, guaranteeing targets will bear the mark of the “enemy” for several days at least. “It serves to humiliate the victim and discredit the person in the eyes of voters as weak and defenseless,” says Oreshkin.

But by now, analyst Dmitry Oreshkin argues, its intended effect has faded. In fact, the opposition itself have started wearing green as a badge of honor. After Navalny was attacked in Barnaul, dozens of his supporters posted pictures of themselves in green online. When Kasyanov was attacked at the Nemtsov march, defiant demonstrators began chanting: “You won’t pour zelyonka over us!” MoscowTimes

COMEY: [W]e have about 1,000 home grown violent extremist investigations and we probably have another 1,000 or so that are — I should define my terms. Home grown violent extremists, we mean somebody — we have no indication that they’re in touch with any terrorists.

[SEN] TILLIS: Any foreign touch. Right.

COMEY: Yes. Then we have another big group of people that we’re looking at who we see some contact with foreign terrorists. So you take that 2,000 plus cases, about 300 of them are people who came to the United States as refugees. DailyWire

This is the direct opposite of statements that refugees pose no threat to national security.

So 15 percent of the FBI’s terrorism cases are refugees – far more than their share of the immigrant population, let alone the general population. And that denominator of 2,000 presumably includes people with no immigration nexus at all – skinheads, antifa, Klan, environmental and animal rights extremists, et al. So the refugee share of immigration-related terrorism investigations is more than 15 percent, perhaps much more. Mark Krikorian at National Review

If vetting alone doesn’t work and banning travel from selected countries is merely a band-aid, what’s left? Simple: The U.S. can’t allow refugees to resettle here. Unless it is an extraordinary emergency, as Krikorian poses, but “even the UN refugee agency acknowledges that emergency cases make up only 0.4 percent of its resettlement referrals.”

“Help refugees where they are – our money goes much, much further and we can keep the security threats off shore,” Krikorian concludes. TruthRevolt